Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Manager

Location: Nairobi

Position type: Contract role until end of March 2027

About the Team

GSMA Mobile for Development (M4D) is a dedicated global team within the GSMA, which brings together our mobile operator members, tech innovators, the development community and governments, to realise the impact of mobile in low- and middle-income countries: https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/

The GSMA Innovation Fund accelerates mobile tech solutions that are addressing key global challenges. Through grant funding and tailored technical assistance, we position innovative organisations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to scale operations and amplify social and environmental impact. 

About the Role

This MEL Manager role is focused on grantees of the Innovation Fund. Their focus will be twofold:

• Work directly with grantees (start-ups and SMEs in LMICs) to develop MEL plans, collect data, support them with any MEL-related challenges, and design and lead impact assessments for each of the active grantees (this will involve managing external suppliers).
• Act as a thought leader, looking critically at our data, developing insights into what grantees need, and identifying where learnings and opportunities lie. This means going beyond tracking KPIs to dig deeper into what the data is telling us about our impact, surfacing findings that can strengthen our support to grantees and sharpen the Fund's overall strategy.

Each round of the Innovation Fund has a specific thematic focus. However, the MEL Manager should expect to work across the following themes: start-ups in LMICs, innovative emerging tech and AI, socio-economic impact, and reaching low-income and vulnerable communities.

Example responsibilities:

• Drafting MEL plans for each grantee and supporting MEL delivery throughout the grant cycle.
• Owning and managing grantee KPI reporting, working across the Innovation Fund team to ensure data drives decision-making and support for grantees.
• Developing research plans for grantee baseline and endline surveys and working with suppliers to execute these surveys.
• Developing and building the Innovation Fund’s evidence base around AI for impact, scale, and digital technology.
• Providing strategic leadership on MEL approaches, helping shape how the Fund measures and understands impact across its portfolio, with a reference to existing benchmarks, frameworks, and best practices.
• Analysing portfolio-level data to pull out trends, insights and lessons learned .
• Producing learning products and thought leadership pieces on AI for impact, scale and digital technology, drawing on evidence from across the grantee portfolio.
• Sharing findings and insights with stakeholders, and building relationships both within GSMA and externally to raise the profile of the Innovation Fund's work.

About You

The ideal candidate should have interest or experience in AI and emerging technology innovations in LMICs, as this is a focus of the Innovation Fund’s future work. However, we do not anticipate candidates to be experts in this field and the scope of their role will not be limited to this industry.

Required skills include:

• Previous experience working with the private sector (SMEs, startups) in LMICs across Asia and Africa in a MEL or Project Officer capacity.
• Drafting and conducting surveys with sample sizes above 100 respondents.
• Ability to think strategically about MEL and impact measurement, and to bring a proactive, thought leadership mindset to understanding and communicating the Innovation Fund's impact.
• Experience producing reports, learning products or other written outputs that communicate findings to a range of audiences.
• Experience building relationships with key stakeholders internally and externally, and communicating findings to a range of audiences.
• Strong data analysis skills, with the ability to go beyond reporting KPIs to identify trends, draw out insights and translate these into clear, actionable findings.
• Proficiency in Excel.
• Strong communication skills, especially for interacting with suppliers and grantees (this includes CEOs, CTOs, and directors of companies).
• Previous experience providing training or capacity building, on any topic, is a plus.
• While the candidate will need to draft MEL plans for grantees, there is room for training on this activity.

Contract type

Worker type

What We Offer

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn page and our Twitter page.

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.